Seested v. Post Printing & Publishing Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 4 district · 42 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Appellant was a million dollar corporation, and it owned and controlled a metropolitan newspaper of large circulation, through and by means of which it committed the wrong. The duty which the jury was called upon to discharge in the award of punitive damages was to assess such a penalty as would be adequate to punish appellant and deter others of like minds and possessed of the same means of inflicting injury from perpetrating similar wrongs. Does an assessment of a penalty of $100,000 (solely punitive), all the facts and circumstances considered, manifest an abuse of discretion. Courts are not endowed with any unusual or peculiar discernment in such matters. The test usually applied by them is whether the assessment is so excessive as to shock the ‘judicial conscience’. The judicial conscience is presumed to be representative of the consciences of all judicially minded right-thinking men and women. Applying as best we may the test just referred to, we are unable to say that there was any abuse of the discretion lodged with the jury, so .far as the assessment of punitive damages is concerned.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Johnson Publishing Co. v. Davis · 123 F. Supp. 36 - Reynolds v. Pegler

2. “"The article in question was false; it was known to the appellant to be false, because the appellant itself concocted the falsehood; in order to give it the similitude of truth, the appellant planted beforehand a lying document of the same purport in the archives of the American Protective League; when the time seemed propitious to make deadly use of the deliberately planned libel, appellant caused the existence and whereabouts of the planted document to be discovered, casually as it were, and reported to it by letter. All was done pursuant to a scheme carefully and craftily laid out. Following the publication there was no retraction by appellant; on the contrary, it republished the same libel, in effect, after this suit was commenced. On the trial there was no claim of privilege, and nothing was offered in mitigation."”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Walcher v. LOEW'S INCORPORATED

3. “the malicious defamation of a person made public in any printing, writing, sign, picture, representation or effigy tending to provoke him to wrath or expose him to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or to deprive him of the benefits of public confidence and social intercourse.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 228 Mo. App. 817 - Conrad v. Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co.